In Korea the most important plant industry is the rice-growing but she has not yet attained self-sufficiency with regard to rice which is the basic food of Korean. In the past, various measures of increasing rice production have been tried with some success but the increasing rate of did not show the sufficient result. Judging from experiences, disease control may be the most important factor which has influence on increasing of rice production in Korea. During the past 60 years three periods divided by the transition of rice diseases were noted, and especially the recent transition attracted much attention . That is, sheath blight and stripe which were minor diseases in the past have promptly spread all over the country and caused heavy losses to rice plant, and also local outbreak of bacterial leaf blight and dwarf were noticed. Various environmental factors are related to such transition of rice disease. Above all, cultivated varieties susceptible to these diseases, increase of application of nitrogenous fertilizer, earlier transplanting and density of transplanting are considered to be lucre closely related to the development of these diseases and successive development of blast. On the other hand. application of forage fungicides such as organic mercury compounds specific to blast contributed to reduce prevalent area if blast in spite of wide spread of susceptible varieties and increase of application of nitrogenous fertilizer. These facts were confirmed by Korean investigators At the present which various diseases to control coexist in the same region, no one variety resistant to all of these diseases is provided and cultural practices for the control of these diseases often do not produce sufficient yield of rice. it is emphasized that a role of pesticides is very great

• J. S. Park